Gaming Performance Comparison

Recommended System Requirements

Game

Opteron 6344

Core i7-5960X 8-Core 3.0GHz

In terms of overall gaming performance, the Intel Core i7-5960X 8-Core 3.0GHz is massively better than the AMD Opteron 6344 when it comes to running the latest games. This also means it will be less likely to bottleneck more powerful GPUs, allowing them to achieve more of their gaming performance potential.

The Core i7-5960X 8-Core was released less than a year after the Opteron 6344, and so they are likely to have similar levels of support, and similarly optimized performance when running the latest games.

Both CPUs exhibit very powerful performance, so it probably isn't worth upgrading from one to the other, as both are capable of running even the most demanding games at the highest settings (assuming they are accompanied by equivalently powerful GPUs).

The Opteron 6344 has 4 more cores than the Core i7-5960X 8-Core. 12 cores is probably excessive if you mean to just run the latest games, as games are not yet able to harness this many cores. The cores in the Core i7-5960X 8-Core is more than enough for gaming purposes. However, if you intend on running a server with the Opteron 6344, it would seem to be a decent choice.

The Core i7-5960X 8-Core has 4 more threads than the Opteron 6344. The Opteron 6344 has one thread per physical core, whereas the Core i7-5960X 8-Core uses hyperthreading and has 2 logical threads per physical core.

Multiple threads are useful for improving the performance of multi-threaded applications. Additional cores and their accompanying thread will always be beneficial for multi-threaded applications. Hyperthreading will be beneficial for applications optimized for it, but it may slow others down. For games, the number of threads is largely irrelevant, as long as you have at least 2 cores (preferably 4), and hyperthreading can sometimes even hit performance.

More important for gaming than the number of cores and threads is the clock rate. Problematically, unless the two CPUs are from the same family, this can only serve as a general guide and nothing like an exact comparison, because the clock cycles per instruction (CPI) will vary so much.

The Opteron 6344 and Core i7-5960X 8-Core are not from the same family of CPUs, so their clock speeds are by no means directly comparable. Bear in mind, then, that while the Core i7-5960X 8-Core has a 0.4 GHz faster frequency, this is not always an indicator that it will be superior in performance, despite frequency being crucial when trying to avoid GPU bottlenecking. In this case, however, the difference is enough that it possibly indicates the superiority of the Opteron 6344.

Aside from the clock rate, the next-most important CPU features for PC game performance are L2 and L3 cache size. Faster than RAM, the more cache available, the more data that can be stored for lightning-fast retrieval. L1 Cache is not usually an issue anymore for gaming, with most high-end CPUs eking out about the same L1 performance, and L2 is more important than L3 - but L3 is still important if you want to reach the highest levels of performance. Bear in mind that although it is better to have a larger cache, the larger it is, the higher the latency, so a balance has to be struck.

The Opteron 6344 has a 10240 KB bigger L2 cache than the Core i7-5960X 8-Core, but on the other hand, it is the Core i7-5960X 8-Core that has a 4 MB bigger L3 cache than the Opteron 6344. In this case, the L2 size is probably what counts, so the Opteron 6344 is likely superior in this area.

The maximum Thermal Design Power is the power in Watts that the CPU will consume in the worst case scenario. The lithography is the semiconductor manufacturing technology being used to create the CPU - the smaller this is, the more transistors that can be fit into the CPU, and the closer the connections. For both the lithography and the TDP, it is the lower the better, because a lower number means a lower amount of power is necessary to run the CPU, and consequently a lower amount of heat is produced.

The Opteron 6344 has a 25 Watt lower Maximum TDP than the Core i7-5960X 8-Core. However, the Core i7-5960X 8-Core was created with a 10 nm smaller manufacturing technology. Overall, by taking both into account, the Opteron 6344 is likely the CPU with the lower heat production and power requirements, but there really isn't much in it.

CPU Graphics

CPU Package and Version Specifications

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Gaming Performance Value

Performance Value

CPU Mini Review

Mini Review

Opteron is AMD's x86 server and workstation processor line, and was the first processor which supported the AMD64 instruction set architecture (known generically as x86-64). It was released on April 22, 2003 with the SledgeHammer core (K8) and was intended to compete in the server and workstation markets, particularly in the same segment as the Intel Xeon processor. Processors based on the AMD K10 microarchitecture (codenamed Barcelona) were announced on September 10, 2007 featuring a new quad-core configuration.

Core i7-5960X 8-Core 3.0GHz is an extreme processor based on the 22nm, Haswell architecture.

It offers 8 Physical Cores (16 Logical), initially clocked at 3.0GHz, which may go up to 3.5GHz and 20MB of L3 Cache.
Among its many features, HyperThreading, Turbo Boost and Virtualization are activated and the processor has multiplier unlocked, meaning it can be overclocked easily.

The processor DOES NOT integrate any graphics. and has a rated board TDP of 140W.

It proves to be over 10% faster than Core i7-4960K. Its performance is exceptionally good and enough for even the most demanding applications.